Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday October 04, 2012 @01:04PM
from the setting-the-bar-low dept.

silentbrad writes with this report from Forbes: "The dark days of SOPA and PIPA are behind the U.S., at least temporarily, as copyright tycoons reground and restrategize, attempting to come up with measures that don't cause the entire internet to shut down in protest. But one country has already moved ahead with similar legislation. The government of the Philippines has passed the Cybercrime Prevention Act, which on the surface, as usual, sounds perfectly well-intentioned. But when you read the actual contents of what's been deemed 'cybercrime,' SOPA's proposed censorship sounds downright lax by comparison. Yes, there's the usual hacking, cracking, identity theft and spamming, which most of us can agree should be illegal. But there's also cybersex, pornography, file-sharing (SOPA's main target), and the most controversial provision, online libel." At least it doesn't mention blasphemy.

The Philippines is one of the last countries in the world where the Catholic Church has a dominant voice in politics, so laws attempting to enforce morality are a fairly common thing. For example, it's one of the only countries in the world where divorce is illegal. As a result, many couples today either don't get married in the first place, or else are in a long term live-in relationship with someone while still being married to someone else.

Cybersex in the Philippines was already legally considered to be a form of prostitution before this law was passed. Now it would appear that the punishment for getting naked on a webcam will be harsher than that for having actual sex for pay, which will only serve to drive women away from the relatively safe jobs involving cybersex and into the more dangerous work of actual prostitution.

Just how much more severe is the punishment for cybersex? The fine for prostitution is 200 to 2,000 pesos. The fine for cybersex is 200,000 to 1,000,000 pesos. Average annual family income in the Philippines is 206,000 pesos as of 2009.

Yes, there's the usual hacking, cracking, identity theft and spamming, which most of us can agree should be illegal.

I can't agree on that at all, and especially with overly-broad terms like "hacking" (or even "spamming"). What is "spamming"? Is that any UCE or is that just penis enlargement pills? Because there's lots and lots and LOTS of perfectly legitimate commercial e-mail that one person would consider spam and another person doesn't.

Hacking? What is hacking? Security research? Breaking into systems? What about altering systems that I own to do things they weren't intended to do?

You don't speak for me, Forbes, so your blatant editorializing is not appreciated.